Here’s one of my favorite weird moments from Futurama. The aliens have announced they are coming to Earth and are going to eat all the humans.
We will begin with the firemen, then the math teachers, and so on in that fashion until everyone is eaten!
The joke is figuring out what “in that fashion” means. What possible ordering could start with firemen and then proceed to math teachers?
In a business meeting yesterday everyone in the room introduced themselves and listed their hobbies. This was one co-workers answer:
I’m into cycling. I’m learning guitar and into music. Fine arts, stock-trading, all that stuff.
All that stuff? What’s the next thing on that list?
The co-worker was male. No Funk, that’s not normal. This was an odd meeting, it’s what we call the “Celebration of Service” meeting. Basically, it’s all the people who were hired the same month as me (March) having a lunch meet with the CEO. It’s an way to meet other people, feel good about how much seniority I have, get some good informal time with the big cheese, bla bla bla. He likes to hear people’s hobbies. Yes, I did mention the blog. He asked me what it was about. I stammered it was something like a pissed-off Seinfeld. And that I wish I could blog about work. He said, go for it, you should. I turned around and told our HR VP to make sure she remembered this moment.
I probably still won’t though. Posts like this are one thing, but posts about our business (on which I have some interesting thoughts) skate close to giving away inside information.
@Funk:
It is interesting that you assumed that Muttrox’s fellow employee was female, since he only described the quote as his “co-workers (sic) answer”. Perhaps it was the “fine arts” that implied it? But then I’m into fine arts, too. No offense, just something of note there, especially when we are so used to businesspeople being assumed to be male. Interesting that you went against the grain here.
And I’m sure that the hobbies thing was an ice-breaker, typical of these silly meetings (I’ve been in a few like this myself!), but helpful in getting people to loosen up and speak more easily about the problems at hand.
Here’s my best guess…
The Futurama thing refers to the people that society needs most in order to get by. I remember an exercise in middle school where we had to pretend the world had ended except for 10 people, and if we could choose those 10 people to restart civilization, who would they be? Invariably the response from people was something like teacher, cop, soldier, doctor, rabbi/priest, etc.
As for the business meeting lady, she was probably just nervous. But more importantly, is that normal practice for a business meeting, to have to declare your hobbies in front of a bunch of strangers? And was your response “Blogging about the inane practices of modern business meetings?”